I managed to pick myself up, just as Kennedy reached my side and, together, we followed the retreating figure, as it made its way among the shadows.  Across the open space before us we followed him and at last saw him dive into an old barn.

A moment later we followed hot-foot into the barn.  As we entered, we could hear a peculiar grating noise, as though a door was swung on its rusty hinges.  The front door was open.  Evidently the man had gone through and closed the back door.

We threw ourselves against the back door.  But it did not yield.  There was no time to waste and we turned to rush out again by the way we had come, just as the front door was slammed shut.

The man had trapped us.  He had left both doors open, had run through, braced the back door, then had rushed around outside just in time to brace the front door also.

We could hear his feet crunching the dry leaves and twigs as he went around the side of the barn again.  Together we threw ourselves against the front door, but, although it yielded a little he had barred it so that it would resist our united strength for some time.

Again and again we threw ourselves against it.  It was horribly dark in there, except for an oblong spot where the moonlight streamed in through a window.  Suddenly the pale silver of the moonlight on the floor reddened.

The man had struck a match and thrown it into a mass of oil-soaked straw and gunpowder which protruded through one of the weather-beaten boards, near the floor.

It was only a matter of a second or so now when the fire swept into the barn itself.  There was no beating it out.  Some one had literally soaked the straw and the floor with oil.  It seemed as though the whole place burst into a sudden blaze of tinder.  Outside, we could hear footsteps rapidly retreating toward the shelter of the clump of woods.

For a second I looked dismayed at the rapidly-mounting flames.

“A very pretty situation,” I forced with a laugh.  “But I hope he doesn’t think we’ll stay here and burn, with a perfectly good window in full view.”

I took a step toward the window, but before I could take another, Kennedy yanked me back.

“Don’t think for a moment that he overlooked that,” he shouted.

Craig looked around hastily.  In a corner, just back of us was a long pole.  He snatched it up and moved cautiously toward the window, keeping the pole as level as possible as he endeavored to get a leverage on the sash.  The flames were mounting faster and higher, licking up everything.

“Keep back, Walter,” he muttered, “just as far as you can.”

He had scarcely raised the window a fraction of an inch when an old rusty, heavy anvil and a bent worn plowshare crashed down to the floor directly over the spot where I should have been if he had not dragged me away.  I started back, aghast.  Nothing had been overlooked to finish us off.